Each Coming Night
by sparklesthedark
Summary: In which Beth develops a taste for being a kleptomaniac, Daryl catches feelings, and they set off a box of fireworks as a distraction.


**Note before: I told myself I wouldn't write this. I hate diverging from canon, but I made an exception. No one gets kidnapped, Beth and Daryl are together 24/7…basically what would have happened if Father Gabriel never showed up. Canon up to "Still," some parts of "Alone" incorporated, but ultimately AU bc no Father Gabriel. Sorry not sorry.**

**I'm not really a multi-chapter fic kind of writer, just because I will give up on it and you will get annoyed, so it's easier to publish it all in one sitting. So here's 15,000 words that will probably be satisfying. I hope.**

**All of the lyrics (with the exception of the Waxahatchee from the show) is from The Mountain Goats' album **_**Tallahassee.**_** If you want something new (even though it's old) to listen to, take a poke around at it. Shit's excellent.**

**TWD isn't mine.**

* * *

_I am not gonna lose you  
We are gonna stay married  
In this house like a Louisiana graveyard  
Where nothing stays buried_

_On Southwood Plantation Road_  
_Where the dead will walk again_  
_Put on their Sunday best_  
_And mingle with unsuspecting Christian men_

-The Mountain Goats, Southwood Plantation Road

* * *

There used to be a routine in going to sleep.

Back at the farm, she would roll down the duvet on the bed while she changed into her star-patterned or pink-striped pajamas and then plug in her phone to charge while she brushed her teeth. The very thought of running water was nothing but a fantasy now, out here in the middle of hell.

Then when they were on the run, after the farm but before the prison, and she lost all sense of order before sleep. You slept when you could. When you knew someone else was going to wake you up if things got real bad. You slept, but one eye was always open.

Beth Greene never thought she would pine for a ten foot wide cell with a shitty mattress on an untrustworthy metal bunk, but here she was, lying on the dirt, trying to sleep before it was her turn to take watch. She watched an anthill a few feet away as an owl hooted somewhere off in the distance. Daryl's back was to her, the wings of his jacket visible in the moonlight and glowing embers of the fire they had made earlier.

At least she had had a blanket at the prison. She huddled closer to the dying fire in a feeble attempt to warm herself. The day before they had stood in front of a giant burning moonshine cabin, sweat coming off their foreheads like waterfalls. Ironic.

A vivid memory came stalking back to the front of her mind as she adjusted her head on the grass. Daryl had handed her the lighter, the darkness of the night tracing his outline in the forest, the shiny silver cap landing softly in her palm.

"_You wanna?"_

"_Hell, yeah."_

She sat up suddenly, reaching into her back pocket to grab her notebook. The pencil came falling out with it, and she fumbled on the ground looking for it in the darkness.

"What're ya doin' girl?" he muttered a few yards away, his back still facing her.

"Marking the day," she answered as she found the small wooden object.

This, in a melancholy way, had become her new bedtime routine. A tally for every day she was still alive. Still breathing. Still here. Even when she hadn't been writing in her journals, she had at least drawn a thin line to somehow represent the twenty-four hours she had failed to bite it.

"How many?" he asks so softly that she didn't think she would have heard it if she hadn't been leaning forward.

"Includin' today," she thumbs along the page, counting from her last total. "Five-hundred and fifteen."

Almost a year and a half into this thing and her heart was still beating. Nine days since the fall of the prison. One day since they got drunk and burned down a building. Daryl didn't say anything other than his usual "hmph," and Beth put the small diary back into her jean pocket, laying back down on the grass to find it dewier than before.

His silence was no longer annoying or burdensome. The comfort languidly made its way between them, feeling out the space that it was bound to take up eventually. She didn't bother with his minimal talking because he had always been that way, and she wasn't about to complain about being stuck with non-talking, straight-shooting Daryl Dixon.

He was probably the reason she had made it the last nine days.

Definitely the reason.

She sings in the mornings now.

For a few days it was just humming, a soft melody, unbroken and sweet, coming from her throat. Daryl supposed that if he had to choose between the sounds their feet made against grass or mud or pavement or rocks to the musical side of Beth, he'd probably pick her most of the time.

It had taken about four or five days, but she started putting words to the song, and now she was full-out singing, and it felt _too_ personal all of the sudden. Beth was just like that though. Always being involved and human. She was a human being, after all.

He had really no clue what "Southern Hospitality" looked like until he had met her on the Greene Farm, but that was more due to a shitty upbringing than his own ignorance of the regional customs. He didn't say anything to her when she started singing, though. Mostly because he felt bad about yelling at her about it during their shouting match.

"_Never sung out in front of a big group out in public like everything was fun. Like everything was a big game."_

The memory of what he had said afterwards followed that recalled sentence like it was instinct, because he had been replaying that over in his mind since it happened.

"_I sure as hell never cut my wrists looking for attention."_

He was a dick. He could have told her he was sorry. If he was that kind of guy, he might've. But he wasn't. So he didn't.

Throwing those thoughts out of his mind, he came back to reality in the woods. They were hungry and decided it might be a good idea to hunt today and then find some semblance of shelter for the night. He could tell Beth was sick of sleeping on the ground. They never stayed anywhere too long, preferring to be on the move and not giving someone a reason to follow them. But even he was ready to admit that he could use a couch for a few nights.

Daryl continued to track a small animal—probably a squirrel or rabbit—through the woods, Beth following closely behind. When his crossbow shot the arrow that hit the target (right between the eyes), they both marveled at the idea of actual meat. It had been three or four days since they had eaten anything other than berries or leaves. There had been that mud snake but he knew she had hated it.

The fires were getting easier to start for her without his lighter, and he was glad to conserve the now-valuable object. He was skinning the rabbit when she started singing again. The sun hung high in the noontime sky, and he listened, enjoying the soft sound her voice made.

"_How long will we ride this way about?  
How long 'till someone caves under the pressure?  
My dreams are haunted by armies, armies of ghosts  
Faces too blurry to make out, numbers far too high to measure."_

They ate in silence, and that's when he realized he kind of liked it when she sang.

But he'd never admit to it.

They are still deep in the forest by the time the sun starts to set, and give up on trying to find a house or a shed or _something_. Beth unwraps the last of the berries, and they eat hungrily, even though they had meat only a few hours ago.

"I need to learn how to track. And to hunt," she says, looking at him. Her eyes are so bright and he wonders how anyone could ever look at them for long.

"Hmph," he nods, taking a small sip from the canteen they shared.

"I'm serious, Daryl!" she smiles, kicking her feet out in front of her like she's trying to make a point.

He licks the berry juice off his index finger and tastes dirt, too. "Alright," he relents. "Tomorrow you can catch thumper and I'll make the fire."

She seems satisfied after that, and he's grateful. He usually takes first watch, but tonight she offers and he finds the ground more inviting than staring into space. He was starting to drift off to sleep when he heard her speak again.

"Not that I would ever be alone, because I will definitely die before you. But just in case we get separated. I just think I need to learn how."

He grunts and rolls over and falls asleep.

* * *

"…pine for summer and we'll buy a beer to shotgun, we'll lay on our lawn, and we'll be good—"

"_The place is nailed up tight. The only way in is through the front door."_

"_What are you doing?"_

"_This is the comfiest bed I've had in years."_

"_Really?"_

"_I ain't kidding. Why don't you go ahead and play some more? Keep singing."_

"_I thought my singing annoyed you?"_

"_There ain't no jukebox, so…"_

* * *

Running. Her lungs are burning. There's a steady _thump, thump, thump_ on the ground beneath her that reminds her that she's been at this pace for hours. The last time they did this was when they ran from the prison, when they actually _couldn't_ stop.

Now, she wants to put as must distance between her and that funeral home as she physically can in the next few strides. Eventually, her legs give out, and she passes out before she hits the ground, the knife in her hand falling ahead of her. Daryl stops a few yards behind, dry-heaving on all fours.

He wants so badly to just fall asleep right that very minute, but he knows that he and Beth can't both be out at the same time. Especially in uncharted area that they haven't even secured yet. He takes a few minutes before he stands up, and when he does, he sees a few walkers making their way toward them.

Beth stirs, but he tells her not to get up as he lifts his crossbow up.

"Stupid—" _Shot._

"Motherless—" _Shot._

"Fucking—" _Shot._

"Shithead—" _Shot._

"Bastard—" _Shot._

He stands for a few minutes before he pulls his arrows from the dead, and practically crawls back to where Beth is now sitting up. She looks dehydrated and pale (for her) and uneasy. He supposes the correct term is _shit_ but he can't really form his usual insulting sentences.

"Why couldn't we have just stayed there?" Beth whimpers against her knees. And he knows she is crying—he has no idea how because he's pretty sure he has absolutely no water left in his body.

"Because someone is a fuck," he spits, his jaw locked. He felt guilty, though. He was such a fucking idiot for not even thinking about what could have gone wrong. He had just jumped on board with a clean house with stocked up food and then they both got shit on.

"'T's my fault," he mutters bitterly. "Shoulda kept movin'. Kinda shit just aint' normal."

"We did what anyone else would have done," she says, looking at him now.

Those eyes.

He looks away.

The sun is peaking up now, and he realizes just how far they must have run. Miles. They had been chased out of the parlor a few hours after the sun went down. Judging by the sun's height, they had probably been on their feet for close to five or six hours. He just wanted to sleep at the moment.

"Suppose we should figure out where we are," she says, getting herself up easily.

"Feel safer sleepin' if I least know what's around," he agrees. Every muscle protested as he got up, but he followed Beth as they walked around their new area of forest. They patrolled on opposite sides like normal, and she held up a hand to call him over, but the finger she put over her lips to caution him to be quiet worried him.

He stealthily meandered over to where she was peaking between high shrubs. Looking for himself, he saw that they had actually made it to the edge of the wood, because there were empty interstate roads in front of them. But it wasn't what he saw that he noticed.

He heard voices. They were getting closer.

Daryl made the same motion to her that she had made before, and she nodded.

A rough looking group of men pass by a few minutes later. Daryl shakes his head at her, as if to say _hell no, ain't joinin' a group fulla bunch of assholes like me_. They wait a solid hour until after their voices fade, and then he dares to poke out over the bushes.

"Clear."

Beth breathes a heavy sigh of relief. "At least we are on interstate."

"Bad," Daryl mutters. "Before we just worried 'bout walkers. Now we gotta worry 'bout other people. Like them," he points his thumb back.

"Yeah," Beth agrees, "but we ain't got nothing on us right now. Might be best to see if there's anythin' worth salvagin along here before we head back into there."

They walked along the forsaken road, peeking into cars for random supplies. The first car she searched, she found a fifth of some kind of whiskey in the backseat. It was hot from sitting in the baking sun. She knows what happened the last time she drank, but she figures it would never hurt her to have it. She crams it into her pack, along with a new pencil (her old one had fallen out during their escape from the funeral home). She finds a suitcase full of non-perishables in the back of a smart car.

"Who would have thought," Daryl laughed. "Thing's a real POS. Probably why no one checked before."

They gathered what they could into their pouches, taking long drinks from the water bottle they had found. Daryl had forgot how thirsty he was until the water touched his lips. He gulped until his stomach felt full and sick, heading down the road again, armed.

Not too long after, they took a break in the shade of a tall tree just off the highway. They took turns napping, and by the time they were both rested and had eaten, the sun was sinking low into the sky. Daryl preferred to move at night anyway, and Beth seemed content to follow him. He watched her as she took her new pencil out of her pocket to tally the day again.

"Five hundred and nineteen."

He nods nonchalantly, to signal that he heard her but not really inviting conversation. Her slender fingers slipped in back into her jeans, and picked up her pack and followed him onto the highway again. They walked side by side, their steps together, quiet but not silent.

His eyes were alert, constantly moving left to right and ahead, just to make sure they were alone. Twice he caught her eyes (illuminated, even in the darkness) fixed on him. Each time their gazes met, hers would quickly go back to looking in front of them. The third time, he questioned it.

"The hell you lookin' at girl?"

"Just thinkin'," she says softly.

"Dangerous."

She smacks his arm in defense, playfully. "Shut up, Mr. Dixon."

She only called him that now when she got pissed or was trying to make a point. He figured it was the latter, because she hadn't had a real reason to be mad at him in a few days now. "Whaddya thinkin' 'bout?"

"Just how different my life is. Not exactly what I thought I'd be doin' at twenty."

Her voice sounded hollow and sad, but there was a hint of a joke that made it okay for him not to ask.

"Not really a picnic for me either, ya know," he says, hand gripping the bow harder.

"Yeah, I know," she sighs. "Just thought I'd be at college or somethin'."

"We don't get to feel sorry," he tells her seriously. "Especially for ourselves. Gotta live like this now."

She gives him a half-smile that he chooses to ignore. He knows he ought to be better with communicating with her, especially after the rollercoaster of events that had occurred in the relatively small amount of time since the moonshine incident. Even after last night, when they had run for their lives, he knew he could lose her. Almost had.

"_Beth! Beth! Run! Run! Get your shit!"_

"_I'm not gonna leave you!"_

"_Go out. Go up the road. I'll meet you there."_

When he had escaped, he had run to find her. He had _never_ felt so relieved to see someone in his entire life. They sprinted across the road and into the woods, and he watched as she ran in front of him, how her hair bounced against her skin.

What if she hadn't been there?

He tries to ignore it because it's a moot point and she's here now. He's happy but sometimes still doesn't know what the hell to do with her. She had pissed him off, made him play babysitter, helped her get drunk, burned down an old house, and now, apparently, he was giving her life advice.

Fuck this.

* * *

"_On the couch in the living room all day long,  
Music on the television playing our song.  
And I'm in the mood  
The mood for you."_

She sings to herself while she washes in the creek. Daryl is some number of yards away, probably with his back turned to give her faux privacy. All the same, she appreciated the alone time. Her voice was quiet, but she liked being able to sing and not worry about anything else.

Her clothes were strewn on a tree log that rested across the water. The porcelain skin that normally shone against her pallid color was a little more pink than usual. They had spent the last few days in the sun, scurrying around the interstate to look for supplies. The sunburn she had on her arms were evidence enough that things like sunscreen were even a luxury now.

They had rolled in to an abandoned rest stop that still had a few maps left inside. They discovered that they had put as much as twenty miles between them and the funeral home in just a few days, and most of it was done within a few short hours. Both agreed to stay far away from that direction, instead dropping due south and heading back toward Atlanta.

"_Thunderclouds forming, cream white moon.  
Everything's going to be okay soon.  
Maybe tomorrow.  
Maybe the next day…"_

Her muscles sighed in relief as she submerged herself in the water. It was cold, but it was warmer than anything she had bathed in since the prison fell. Her hair tumbled down her shoulders, clinging to her still-wet skin. It felt so unbelievably good to just be clean. The small travel-sized bottles of shampoo she had managed to steal out of a purse in one of the cars made her hair smell like lilac and honey.

Something shuffled to the right, and she looked up to see a deer, staring her straight in the eye, before an arrow hit it, dead on. Beth's hand instinctively raised to her mouth to stifle a squeal of surprise, but suddenly she was on her guard.

It could be Daryl's bow. It might not be.

But whoever it belonged to, they would surely see her in the creek.

Completely naked.

She made noise splashing out of the water, quickly trying to grab the shirt she used to dry herself off with, and rushing into her clothes before she heard Daryl's voice.

"Ah—shit…" she turned her head to see him looking away, embarrassed. "I'm sorry, thought ya were further upstream."

She shrugged, just glad that it wasn't a stranger that had shot it.

"'T's all right," she told him calmly, although she was pretty sure he had caught a look at her momentarily exposed ass, and found her neck and face flushed with awkwardness. "Least we have dinner now."

Once she had finished dressing, she made her way back up to Daryl, who was cleaning the fresh kill.

"Gonna have to take what we can. Don't know how far we can drag this old bitch," he muttered. A few months ago, Beth might have cringed at the sight of a deer's innards, but now it was nothing more than a routine thing to watch an animal be gutted.

"Could just make camp here for a few days?" she suggested, setting down her pack. "Think we're far enough off the interstate to be safe?"

"We ain't never safe girl," he shot back over his shoulder. "Reckon we could make camp. But I've been thinkin'."

"Dangerous," she smiles, thinking of when he had said that exact same thing.

He ignored her. "I think we outta drop south east and head toward Savannah."

She knew this had been a long time coming. Daryl didn't talk much about anything really, but when he had spoken in the last few days regarding their current location, he had seemed to drop hints about trying to find new ground to break through.

Immediately she protested, "Daryl we can't. What if we are close to others from the prison? If we leave this area, we might never find them…"

"Beth," he said, trying to get her attention. He had said her name so softly, and she wanted to cry instead of giving him her consideration. "Could run into them on the road there." She huffed. "Point is, we ain't doin' ourselves any favors if we stay here, just the two of us."

"What are we gonna find in Savannah that we can't find here? Huh?" she asks, voice shaking.

"Water."

The conversation ends there. She didn't want to argue, and he wasn't in the mood to try and convince her otherwise. The silence was thick as he cleaned the rest of the deer. Beth washed his shirt in the creek without asking, leaving it to dry on the log she had her own clothes on.

She finally can't stand the silence any longer, and she speaks quietly with a firm voice.

"Regardless of what we decide to do about leavin' or stayin', I think we ought to find better shelter than just this part of the woods."

He agrees with her, so he takes what he can salvage from the deer and they head out toward the interstate as the sun goes down. They walk for a few hours, killing a handful of walkers with knives and keeping to the tree line to avoid being seen. Beth notices a housing plan in the distance, off the road, but Daryl shakes his head.

"Could be other people there. Ain't dealin' with that shit."

They settle for a barn they find, with a large chewing tobacco advertisement on the side. There was no house and no other buildings on the small plot of land. The fence looked to be electric, but despite being turned off, it looked like it had held up pretty well.

Not a walker in sight.

Daryl clears the lower part first, finding nothing to worry about. Beth climbs the ladder at his heels while he carries his knife in an attacking position. The loft has a lot of hay, but nothing else. Beth lays her things on the floor happily. No dirt floor for her tonight. They hang a string of loose cans on every entrance to the barn, and decide to eat the venison tonight, while it was fresh. There are a few lanterns on a workbench, and Beth uses the lighter.

"It's like I'm home again," she whispers softly. "Haven't slept on hay since I was sixteen."

Daryl makes an indistinct "hmph" but there's a semblance of a smile on his lips so she feels warm anyway. She writes in her diary that night by the lantern. It's the first time since the prison that she does anything other than tally the day. She takes the time to count the days up from the beginning, to write the actual date down. July second. It feels weird, writing about running, losing Maggie and Glenn, and Rick. Carl. Her father.

Suddenly she's got tears streaking down her face and she can't write anymore. She marks the day and puts the journal back in her pocket.

"All right?" he asks, his sudden presence unsettling to her.

Some new kind of reality seemed to wrap around her in that moment. It was impossible to ignore the simple truths any longer. She was on the run with Daryl. They were alone. Probably would be for a very long time.

The back of her hand wipes her face, her tears dampening the skin. "I'm never gonna see them again," she deadpans. "I don't even know if they're alive."

Her eyes chanced a glance at him, and she could tell he felt uncomfortable. He had never said anything to her before when she had cried at the train tracks, or at the golf bar. She didn't need the comfort, especially from him, but accepting a difficult truth never came easy to her.

"Maybe," he said softly. "Can't prove what's gonna happen."

When she didn't say anything, he sat down in front of her, Indian style. For a few seconds, his eyes bore into hers, and she pulled herself together. She leaned back onto the pile of hay, staring at the ceiling for what felt like hours. One of them turned the lanterns out, and the loft in the barn suddenly had two sleeping people inside.

She slept well, despite her qualms before falling asleep. She woke before he did—a rare occurrence in the history of forever—and she crawled down to have a look outside. Dark clouds loomed low in the sky, and she felt something rumble in the distance that gave an essence of foreboding in her gut.

"Storm's comin'," Daryl said, apparently having woken up.

She turned around to face him. "I don't think we ought to go south Daryl," she said. "I think everyone who is left had that idea already. We should go further inland, away from big places. North."

He looked at her in this way that made her uncomfortable. Not because it was belittling or rude or anything like that. It was too sincere for him. Daryl was brutally honest but most of the time it was just brutal. After a few seconds, he nods stiffly. She breathes a sigh of relief.

"Gotta find a car," he says gruffly. "Ain't fuckin' walkin' that far."

* * *

"I think that's a great way to get killed," he said defiantly, crossing his arms. "Might as well put a bullet through our heads, huh?" His voice is loud, at least louder than it should be. Beth winced and did a quick check around the clearing to make sure no walkers were stumbling in.

Clear.

"What other choice do we have Daryl?" she pleads with him.

They were arguing after their third stop on the interstate. Trying to find a car was difficult enough. Trying to find car that didn't have all the gas siphoned out and still worked seemed to be too large of a task for the two of them. There had traveled farther north in the process, finding fewer cars.

Beth had mentioned circling back to that housing plan they had noticed the night they slept in the barn. Daryl hadn't liked the idea, saying it was too dangerous. There could be people, walkers, or—

"'Who knows what else' I know!" she whispered loudly, repeating the reasons he had against going there. "But it was far enough off the road that I don't think people would just go there. Come on…there could be tons of stuff there. Things we could use. Like medicine and gas and maybe even a working car."

His eyes locked on her along with his jaw. He looked like he wanted to argue against it still, but Beth could tell she was winning the war. After a few more seconds of silence, he conceded and they began their backtracking through the woods, staying away from the road.

It took a few hours, and the sun was sinking low in the sky by the time they saw it again.

"Nighttime is better for this anyway," she told him. "If there are people there, they won't see us."

"Easier for walkers to sneak up on us," he warned her.

She ignored him, inching closer to the fence that enclosed the backyard of one of the homes. The sunlight that was left allowed her to have a pretty good look around, and it seemed deserted. Daryl followed close as she unhooked the clasp to the fence and crept inside. The backdoor was unlocked, and she hesitated before going inside.

What if Daryl was right, and this got them killed?

Her legs made the decision to ignore her brain, and headed inside, knife at the ready. It was very dark, and something poked her in the back and made her jump. It was only Daryl. He had his crossbow ready to go, but his hand was holding out a flashlight to her, and she took it, silently.

The light shadowed the room, but it was enough to see a mostly empty room. A couch sat against the wall, carpet matted with something dark (blood?) and a bunch of family photos lay near a television stand. She stepped closer, felt Daryl turn to look behind them.

"There's blood," she whispered quietly.

"Keep on your guard," he hissed.

Beth peeked behind chairs and into closets, but nothing was lurking behind any foreboding shadows. Daryl came around and said the downstairs was clear, not a walker in sight. Together, they headed up the stairs to the second floor. Beth trailed this time, walking backwards to make sure they hadn't missed anything.

Daryl went left and she went right, creeping into one of the bedrooms. The bedroom walls were painted a thin white, but the room—despite being free of walkers—was not like anything Beth had ever seen. Four or five posters adorned the wall, depicting a creepy, painted black face with others behind it. Dark lyrics and album titles were scratched onto the wall above the unmade bed.

The computer desk was littered with old homework papers and books. The whole area reminded her of something a school shooter's room would look like. It creeped her out more than the undead.

"Everythin' good?" he asks behind her, making her jump.

"Yeah," she whispers, looking at a chemistry textbook that sat on the desk. "Creepy."

Daryl nodded once, looking around. "Fuckin' weird kid." He steps out, looking back into the hallway. "Should check the garage. The kitchen had nothin' left, but figured it'd already be looted."

She didn't say anything at first, just continuing to stare around the room. She could see a pile of magazines in front of an open closet door. A large box labeled _Phantom_ sat at the mouth of the closet. The ceiling was decorated with model airplanes, hanging from strings and hooks.

Beth nodded, responding to his declaration, taking one more look around before following him out the door. She stopped in the doorway, looking back at the desk. Quickly, she grabbed the chemistry textbook (it was heavier than it looked) and put it in her pack, catching up to Daryl. He didn't say anything, and she was grateful for not having to explain.

The house was, overall, really nice. It hadn't escaped being vacant for over a year, with the usual wear and tear that comes without anyone to take care of it. Some of the family photos remained intact. Beth found a change of clothes from a dresser that were much needed (her yellow polo had worn out its welcome).

They opened up the door to the two-car garage to find a small SUV occupying the whole space. Beth couldn't believe it. That something like this would still be here. Daryl nodded to her, like he agreed with her presumption that if it was too good to be true, it probably was. She was three feet from the car when a hand pressed against the glass, pounding against it.

A walker.

Daryl motioned for her to open the door while he stood, ready to knife its head. When Beth opened the door, they discovered there wasn't just one. The family of four that had lived in the house all sat in the car, and Daryl put a knife through the two sitting in the backseat. The one in the passenger side Beth knifed from behind, and Daryl went around to the driver seat, but the man sitting there had been shot in the head.

Beth felt burgeoning sadness coming up through her thoughts. Her suspicions were confirmed as she walked around the find the exhaust pipe hooked up to a tube trailed into the car. They had killed themselves in this car. All except what looked to be the father. He had put a bullet through his brain.

"Oh god," she half-sobbed, half cried.

Daryl began dragging them to the corner of the garage, tossing them to the side. He took the gun from the front seat.

"You can't just leave them!" she whispered loudly.

He looked at it, "It don't matter none. They're dead."

"They were people."

"Exactly. They _were_." He was back at the car, and he was trying to start the car. When she heard the engine roar to life, he cried out, "Son of a bitch! We got one!"

She huffed and turned her back to the dead family, hiding her disgust in an attempt for peace. "I'm going to check to see if there's anything left to take." She crossed the kitchen and stood at the foot of the stairs, about to open the supply closet on the opposite side when movement made her stop. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something out in the street.

No, it wasn't just the street.

The road was moving.

She peeked through the curtains to see a herd of walkers, rambling aimlessly through the small enclosed area of the street. Fucking hell. She was starting to swear like him now.

"Daryl," she whispered loudly. "Get over here."

"Find anythin'?" he asked. "I found a roll of duct tape in the—"

She covered his mouth with her hand and brought his face in front of the window.

"Fuck," he breathed through his teeth. "Fucking fuck, what the fuck."

Beth scrambled away from the window. "You don't think they heard the car start, do you?"

He shook his head. "No, they don't look like they've found anythin' yet. We can't take the car out into that street."

Beth looked like she was about to cry. Maybe she was. She was so tired of living like this.

"We have to leave it. Get out of here alive and look somewhere else for a car."

She agreed, and followed him through the empty rooms towards the back door. They both stopped dead in their tracks when they saw the fence had been left open, and a few walkers had managed to make it into the backyard in the time they had been clearing the house. There were more pouring through the gate as they stood there.

"You didn't fucking close the gate," she hissed through her teeth.

Daryl looked like a deer in the headlights, and Beth might have marveled at the fact that she had caught him looking like that if they weren't in such a precarious position at the moment. He kept muttering "fuck" under his breath, pacing back and forth.

Suddenly she had an idea.

"You said you found a roll of duct tape?" she said, eyes going wide.

He looked at her, like he had no idea where she was going with this. "Yeah, but…"

"The creepy kid had a box of _Phantom Fireworks_ in his closet." His face lit up like one of his cigarettes.

They raced back upstairs, pausing to look out the window at the top of landing. The swarm of walkers was pretty thick, and would take a pretty huge distraction to move at any great distance. Beth crept at the sill, pointing out the terrain to Daryl.

"If we can find something that could move down that hill after we light them, they would go down by themselves. We would really only need to wait a few minutes. Enough of them would be out of the way that we could go the opposite direction and get out of here."

He seemed uneasy with the plan, but he nodded and followed her back into the room. She pulled out the box of fireworks, blowing the dust off the cover of the box. The packing tape was still on top, and when she opened it with her pocket knife, all of the Styrofoam was in its place. They were practically brand-new, even if they have been sitting in the closet for over a year.

"Let's hope these still light," she whispered.

Daryl took them out of the box, trying to get a sense in how they worked. Beth went back over to the closet, hoping to find a skateboard or something. No such luck.

"Nothing with wheels?" Daryl asks, looking defeated.

She shakes her head.

"Well, it was a good plan," he told her.

She sat down on the bed, defeated. The models on the ceiling shadowed Daryl, covering some of his features. Beth sighed, thinking that at least if she as going to die, it would be with him. And they wouldn't die hating each other's guts. That was her silver lining.

He looked up at her, his face shadowed by one of the airplanes, the antenna drawing a line right across his eyes.

She shot up off the bed. Antenna. It was a remote controlled model!

"Daryl!" she whispered. "That model is a radio controlled airplane!"

He stood up, carefully taking it off of the hook and string that tied it to the ceiling. "I'll be damned," he muttered.

"No you won't," she smiled, searching the desk for the remote. It was buried under a few papers, but it was accessible.

"Do we have any batteries in our flashlights that could fit in this remote?" she asks, holding up the empty slots. He silently takes his out, and they fit into the battery compartment, which Beth shuts tightly. They fill the model with the only spare batteries they have left, and test it. The remote isn't complicated, and has three different settings: ground mode, flight, and landing.

"It has wheels," he tells her. We can drive it on the ground with the fireworks on top. Don't need to fly."

She nods, and they began to duct tape as many fireworks as they can to the outer shell of the plane. It was a bit of an experiment, trying to find which ones were the most powerful but wouldn't weigh it down too much. Turns out, Daryl knew quite a bit about setting off fireworks.

"'T's nothin'," he muttered when she asked. "Just stupid kid shit that Merle and I got into."

When they are both satisfied with how the model worked with the addition of explosives, they quietly walked back downstairs, avoiding being seen through the back door. There were fewer walkers in the backyard now, and Daryl looked at her.

"Gotta kill the ones in the yard. Set the plane down out there and send it over that hill."

She nodded. "I'll do it."

Immediately he shook his head. "No girl, you ain't. Get the car and meet me at the end of the street."

She looked at him sternly. He showed no signs of wavering under her duress, but she continued to apply pressure anyway. "I can't drive a car," she told him. "Never have. Ever. This was my idea, okay. My plan. Just let me do the things I know I can do."

"It's dangerous, Beth."

She couldn't help it; she laughed. "In case you haven't noticed, we live in a world overrun with dead people who like to bite the livin'. I don't think you get to tell me what's dangerous anymore. Coming here was dangerous. Leaving here will be just as hard. Now, are ya gonna stand there and waste time, or are you gonna let me prove that I can help?"

His eyes locked on hers again, and she felt something tug in her stomach. A brief flashback to their argument at the moonshine cabin flashed to the front of her mind.

"_I know you look at me and you just see another dead girl. I'm not Michonne. I'm not Carol. I'm not Maggie. I've survived and you don't get it 'cause I'm not like you or them. But I made it and you don't get to treat me like crap just because you're afraid."_

"Fine," he sighed. "But if you do something stupid and get yourself killed, I ain't cleanin it up."

"Ain't gonna die," she whispered. "Be at the end of the street." She handed him her pack, taking only her knife and a lighter. He sighed, looking at her.

"Be careful."

She didn't say anything, just slipped out the back door. There were five walkers in the yard, and she took them out easily, shutting the gate to avoid a run in with any others. She surveyed her options. The fence would only keep them out for so long, and they might decide the stampede if she set it off down the hill behind the house. The pavement would put more distance between them and the fireworks if something went awry.

She decided to take her chances and slipped outside the fence. She avoided walkers by moving through the overgrown landscaping next to the house. Her hands steadied themselves against the house. The garage was right behind her. Daryl would start the car as soon as the fireworks started going off.

Taking a deep breath as silently as she could, she set the model plane down on the sidewalk in front of her, and set the lighter to the bottom of the fireworks. Quickly, she stepped back into the shrubs. She flipped the remote on, and drove the plane on the street, narrowly avoiding walkers a few times. It only made it one house down before the first of the flares started going off. Through the wall, she heard the car start.

Walkers began to shift, making their way to the right and leaving the front of the house. The plan was working. She kept her thumb pressed to the steering stick, driving it forward as more and more began to go off, setting the nighttime sky ablaze in blue and white and pink fireworks.

When she was satisfied that the dead would stay focused on the loud crashing and banging commotion in the sky, she stopped moving the remote, and set it down in the dirt. The last few were going off, and the walkers were moving farther down the street, _like the dumb shitheads that they are_, she thinks.

She counts to one hundred. The spare fireworks that she has beside her are her last source of defense. She lights them and throws them against the neighboring house, and then she _runs_.

Dodging walkers and street lights and mailboxes, she can't focus on anything because the sounds are ringing in her ears and her vision is dark and every few seconds her shadow is illuminated against the pavement from the fireworks.

She hears the car before she sees it. Daryl drives up the street, the SUV making its way towards her. She can see him in the front seat, the blue and white flare shadowing his features. She hops in the side, grabs the box of the rest of them, and lights the cluster before they drive away, leaving the herd behind.

"Helluva show," Daryl jokes after they reach the end of the street. They watch the rest of them blow up in the sky. The booming is bound to attract more of them from all over, but neither of them can be bothered, both so relieved to be alive.

"You know what's funny?" she asks. He looks at her. "When I counted my days the other night in the barn, it was the second. Now, I just realized it is the Fourth of July."

* * *

They had drove on into the early hours of morning. Daryl had watched Beth as she slept, glancing from her to the road frequently. They were both alive because of her. She was a pure genius. Daryl had never equated Beth with being able to get them out of a tight spot, but she had done just that.

He chanced a glance toward her then, watching as the sun hit her hair. It sort of glowed in that way that made him feel weird. He thought of when he had stumbled upon her bathing in the creek. She had creamy white skin, the most beautiful kind he had probably ever seen. The contour of her spine haunted the back of his eyelids, but he bid himself to stop because it was wrong and disgusting and he was old enough to be her father. Maybe the sixteen-year-old still trapped inside of him would have loved to watch her sleep, back when he was a stupid fuck-up. Who was he kidding, he was still a fuck-up.

But he was a fuck-up that was alive thanks to her.

She stirred after a while, and immediately made him pull over, demanding that he sleep for at least a few hours. He protested, but just like last night, she won him over. She perched herself in a watcher's positon outside the car, as he laid down in the backseat, falling asleep a lot easier than he thought he would.

He has weird dreams, mixed with memories of Merle setting off firecrackers in the woods and almost burning the whole damn thing down. It morphs into Beth, back in the water and talking sweetly to him. It's restless and when he wakes up, he's glad to have an excuse to get back on the road.

"Guess what I found in the glove compartment?" she asks, a smile promising something behind it.

"Not a cure, I'm guessin'?" he quips, trying to keep it light.

"Nah," she says, looking down at the ground. "Just some old mixed CDs."

He just "hmphs" because he knows she hates that, but she just smiles, taking her seat and putting one of the discs into the player. He takes a deep breath, stretching and crouching back up to the driver's side. "Ready to go?" she asks.

"Gotta take a piss."

Her face wrinkles, and he knows she hates it when he talks like that but he can't help it. He's pissed at her for showing up in his dreams when he is trying so hard to be a decent human being. When he gets back into the car, she is writing something in her damn book. He starts the engine.

Immediately, some annoying song is playing from the CD she had inserted.

"The fuck is this shit?" he asks, turning the volume down and pulling onto the road. He was keeping them on back roads, doing his best to avoid places where there could be people.

She frowns. "Guess they didn't really have good taste, huh?" He shakes his head. Silence hangs between them, and when she sucks in a breath, he knows whatever she is going to say isn't music related.

"I wanted to apologize."

He stayed quiet.

"It was my idea to go there yesterday. And you were right. We shouldn't have. It was stupid and I won't ever let myself talk you into doing something like that again."

It takes a few minutes for him to say anything back. "You got us out of there. That was brilliant, what you pulled. So you made up for your fucked up decision." She smiled, seemingly content with his acceptance. "Plus, we got what we came for. So it wasn't totally wasted."

"Yeah," she agreed. "How much gas we got?"

"Had almost a full tank when we left. Got a little over three-fourths now. We'll be good for a while."

"Where we headed?"

"Dunno," he admits. "Figured we try and find somewhere to stay for a few nights. Get some food, make a run. That house may have had a car, but that was it. No food or nothin'. And we are running low."

"I don't really wanna go back to eatin' mud snakes," she laughs.

"Me neither."

"Well, I say we find somewhere sheltered off. Maybe another barn."

He agrees, and they continue on the road in silence. She's busy writing, and he's keeping his eyes peeled for any place that might serve as a temporary haven. He's not as tired as he should be, probably from the adrenaline rush of escaping a herd of walkers. They're getting closer to the Appalachians because he can see them in the distance.

She comments on how she likes how they look and he finds himself talking about growing up, how Merle was always being a shit and dragging him along, too.

"I never liked having siblings when I was younger," Beth admitted. "Always found it annoyin' that they were playing with me and treatin' me like I couldn't fend for myself."

"Merle never cared," he said, a little more bitter than necessary. "He made me learn to fend for myself by never really helping out."

She turned her head to look at him. "Never learned anythin' from your daddy?"

That was the last thing he wanted to talk about. "No." It was a final statement on the subject. He noticed that she didn't want to let it rest, but did so for the sake of peace. He didn't feel like talking much after that, so he drove on in silence, the mountains growing larger with every mile.

Beth turned the volume up after a few minutes, just to avoid total silence in the car. It was some new-age version of shit music, and he was pretty sure she didn't really like it either. It occupied the empty spaces. It was good enough.

"What kind of music did you like?" she asks after a few minutes, head resting on her knees.

"I dunno," he mutters. "Never really thought 'bout it much."

"If you had to pick one song that you liked, then what'd that be?" He wasn't looking at her, but he could feel her stare. Her blue eyes just staring at him, trying to scratch off whatever it was he presented to her. It made his skin crawl.

"Maybe," he started, "I dunno, _In the Year of the Wolf_ I guess."

"Who did that?"

"Motörhead."

"Hmmm," she mused. "That rock n roll stuff. My daddy never really let me listen to that much."

"What'd you listen to then?"

"Mostly church songs," she said, turning to look out the window. Her finger trailed the line of the horizon, moving up and down and across with the ragged mountain train.

"Anythin' beside that?"

"Sure, some things," she replied. "Fleet Foxes and the Mountain Goats most of the time. Occasionally some Iron and Wine."

"Don't know what the hell you're naming," he snorted.

She blushed. "Guess we just didn't have the same taste."

"Coulda told you that 'fore we started exchanging favorites."

"Well, I—what about that, over there?" She suddenly points to a cluster of buildings around the base of one of the first mountains. It looked like a small town, something that probably didn't have much in the way of a supply run. He told her just as much.

"Your call," she said. "I ain't makin' decisions like that anymore."

He smiled tentatively. The SUV came to a coasting stop at an intersection, where a sign indicated that they should turn right if they were to continue to the town. He looked over at Beth, who in turned looked back at him. "You decide," she whispered.

His eyes looked between her and the sign, darting back and forth.

"Ah, what the hell," he muttered, "doesn't hurt to check it out?"

They turn left and head down a long and winding road, full of overgrown shrubs and trees. She sings the whole way there, as the town creeps closer in their car. It's getting closer to evening, and he thinks they should find some place in the area to bunker down for the night, at least.

"_Look beyond the broken bottles  
Past the rotting wooden stairs  
Root out the wine-dark honeyed center  
Not everyone can live like millionaires."_

Her voice haunts him, the way it silkily slides around his head, making him go blind. He tried to focus on what he was seeing. The town was small, one road completing the main street with most of the shops and businesses. He rolled down the windows and slowed down, watching carefully for any signs of life around the street or buildings. Beth had the lone handgun in their possession in her lap, but her hand was wrapped tightly around the base. Ready to go.

"Doesn't look like anyone's been here in a while," she whispers, done singing.

He is inclined to agree with her, but wants to wait to be completely sure. They leave the center of town, out in the more rural residential area. Houses line both sides of the street, forsaken and boarded up in fear and anguish. They drive on, not content to stop until they have circled back through the town twice.

The second drive around, Beth notices a driveway nestled between tall trees, and tells Daryl to turn down it, just to check it out. They come up on a small cabin, far enough back that it was invisible from the road. It looked like anyone inside could still have a decent view of anyone trying to come close to it. She looked at him, and it only look one blink for him to agree.

"Let's go."

They searched the perimeter first. It was clear. She opened the door and he slipped inside crossbow held at the ready, prepared to shoot on sight. Floorboards that were long since alone groaned under the force of his boots, protesting the new presence. Beth followed close behind him, checking under the table and behind the couch.

"Clear," he told her when he came back from the bedrooms. "Ain't no one here."

They light a fire in the fireplace, and Beth sets down her pack as he locks up the place. Windows shut tight, doors dead bolted. There were taking absolutely _no_ chances. When he came into the sitting room, she was curled up by the fire, reading a book. He looked closer and saw it was that chemistry textbook that had been sitting on the desk at the other house.

"The hell you readin' that shit for?"

She looked up. "Well, I never got to finish high school."

"I didn't neither," he retorted, "but you don't see me off readin' some school book."

It took a moment for him to realize what he had said. She looked up at him, her eyes shining with some kind of new emotion—pity. He looked away. There was no way in hell Daryl Dixon ever wanted any sympathy from anyone, especially a girl like Beth. Never.

"Why didn't you graduate?" she asked.

"Don't matter none."

"Sure it does," she insisted. "You said it so you obviously think about it."

He rolled his eyes. She didn't get it.

"Daryl," she began, "look. We are out here alone. Chances are, I'm never going to meet another person in my whole life who I can trust. You're it. My sister is gone. My father is dead. I've got nobody left. So if I'm never going to get to know another person again in my entire life, why can't I at least get to know you?"

He looked down at his feet, shuffled a little. Why did she have to be so upfront about this kind of shit? Why couldn't she go back to being that whiny, shut up teenager that she was back at the farm? Now she was older, as the year at the prison had worn on her. She had practically been a mother to Judith. Had grown up way before she had to.

She even looked older. In a beautiful way, but he'd never admit to that.

"Merle was always getting' locked up for doin' dumb shit, you know," he started to explain. She closed the book at sat up a little straighter, to be kind enough to give him complete attention. "When he finally left, it was just me and my old man. He didn't give a fuck 'bout me.

"I didn't have no time to be wasting at school. Dropped out, fended for myself. Lived with my asshole dad until Merle showed up one day. I followed him out, never looked back really."

Beth sat there. She either didn't know what to say or didn't have anything to say for once. He was grateful to have shut her up. Maybe now that she knew the truth, that he wasn't anything like her, that he could never be good like her, she would quit asking him to explain himself.

But she surprised him again. "I'm sorry, Daryl. That that happened to you."

He didn't say anything for the rest of the night, and she didn't bother him. She went back to reading, and he went to sleep.

* * *

"_That's a real first drink right there…What's the matter?"_

"_Nothing…It's just my dad always said bad moonshine can make you go blind."_

"_Ain't nothing worth seeing out there anymore anyway."_

* * *

The next morning, she awoke with the chemistry textbook still on her chest. It was heavy, and when she moved to stretch, it fell onto the floor with a loud thud. She heard Daryl shift on his feet as she got out of bed. He rushed into the room she had been sleeping in, without knocking or anything. He had his cross bow up, moving from one end of the room to another. Then he saw her.

She stood there, in nothing more than a t-shirt and underwear, looking at him.

"Sorry—thought I heard—never mind," he muttered, backing out and slamming the door.

Beth thinks she ought to feel embarrassed, or at least feel good about him giving her privacy, but she finds that she doesn't care. Traveling with one other person during the end of the world has taught her two things:

It is very difficult to find things to talk about.

Dignity isn't a thing anymore.

She can't figure out why Daryl insists on treating her like they still live in whatever the hell year it was. 2014. 2015? She didn't know anymore. But she found it annoying that he was treating her like she was sixteen. They were human beings who have to support each other to survive. Well, she was. He wasn't.

"_I'll be gone someday."_

"_Stop."_

"_I will. You're gonna be the last man standing. _

_You are. You're gonna miss me so bad when I'm gone, Daryl Dixon."_

"_You ain't a happy drunk at all."_

He didn't make any mention of seeing her in her underclothes for the second time in a week. Instead, he laid out his intentions of making supply runs into town and around the surrounding houses for the day. They agreed to split up, to cover more ground. Beth would take the street they were on, searching down and around in the houses for any food or whatever she could find. Daryl would go into town to search the businesses and shops.

"If there's anything left, it'll probably be where you're lookin'. Anything in town is probably long gone."

She nods, emptying her pack in her bedroom to make room for any supplies she might find. Daryl stops before he goes outside, looking at her sternly.

"You get into any trouble, you double back here. Everything will be locked 'cept the front window. Crawl in through there and shut yourself up, you understand?"

"Got it."

"Be back here at sundown. We meet here." He went to leave, but she stopped him.

"Can I have the gun?"

He scrutinized her. "Why? Only got one bullet left anyway. Ain't much use for walkers."

"Ain't for walkers. It's for me," she says.

There's a moment where they both look at each other, and she's pretty sure they are thinking the same thing. It doesn't matter, because it blows over and whatever he was going to say to protest is gone. He tosses her the handgun and leaves the cabin in the SUV, and she's standing there, looking out the door like she's lost.

It doesn't take her long to get herself together, to put the gun in the back of her jeans, crawl out the window, and get back to the street. The first house she sees is an old style Victorian, something she finds creepy and, frankly, a little scarier than anything she's ever done. Then she remembers she set off a box of fireworks in front of walkers and decides whatever is inside this house, she can handle it.

The house turns out to be relatively empty. She finds little in the way of food and anything useful. There is a teenage girl's bedroom on the top floor. Beth can tell by the way the room had been arranged, and roots through the closet to see if she can find any clothes that are salvageable and maybe her size.

It's like another world (it is) and she's a teenage girl again, submersed in clothes and stupid shit that just doesn't matter anymore in a world where survival is the only thing that does. She finds beautiful panties that has lace stitching on it. Because she knows the house is clear, and strips completely naked, changing her underwear. There's even a bra that matches.

She catches sight of herself in the mirror.

It's nothing special, she supposes. She remembers being in high school, dying to be thin, to be beautiful like Maggie or the other girls. Now she sees the muscle on her arms, formed and well-defined from necessity, not athleticism. Her once unflattering figure now stands firm, less curvy than she would have liked, but womanly shaped. Her breasts are small and always have been.

It's depressing, but she turns away, reserving her right to take the expensive underwear. She needed new ones (maybe not of this quality, but she is nearly twenty years old now and wants to feel like she can finally wear those advertised panties instead of the cotton ones that come in the six-pack). Maybe she hopes Daryl asks what she got on her run so she can show him.

Then she blushes and finds a new pair of jeans and a sleeveless shirt. Before she leaves the house, she grabs a leather jacket that was hanging in the hall closet, closing the door behind her.

The next few houses offer absolutely nothing. There are no walkers that she has to kill, and she feels a little anxious after a few hours of complete solitude. Not that she enjoyed killing them, but at least it gave her some kind of indication of _something_. She was groping blind in the darkness in most of these houses, finding family photos still on the wall, perfectly intact. Like these people just vanished.

It's getting later before she finds anything useful. The last house on the street two blocks down had a pantry in the basement (she used her flashlight) with a few cans that had expiration dates within the last few months (she's suddenly glad she keeps track of the date). They land in her pack with a _thump_ and she crawls up the stairs of the basement to find the rest of the house getting darker.

The window indicated that the sun was already sinking well-below the sky, and she had a mini-stroke, thinking Daryl was probably back at the cabin already, waiting for her.

Her worn out boots allow her to feel the uneven pavement under her feet as she sprints back to their rendezvous point. When he's standing there, looking anxious, she feels some kind of warmth spread through her body, but she doesn't have time to think about it because he's got her close and it's weird.

"The fuck took you so long?" he demands, letting go of her as if she were on fire.

He didn't meet her eyes.

"Sorry," she explained, still out of breath. "I was in a basement and forgot to track the sun, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it won't—" She trails off when she sees his shoulder is cut, deeply. The angel wings jacket had been sliced through on one side completely, and she could tell he was trying to hide his pain. "What happened?"

"'T's nothin'," he mumbles, turning to go inside.

She follows him in, noticing the redness of the gash, and stopped him to sit at the table after the door is closed. "It's not nothin'," she says sternly. He starts to protest again, but she shakes her head. "Just stay there, I'll clean it up."

He doesn't move, and she goes to the contents of her pack that lay on her bed. She finds the antiseptic and bandages they had saved from the funeral house when she had hurt her ankle. Luckily they still had everything she would need.

She makes him move towards the fire to give her more light, and his eyes shift back and forth uncomfortably. Nothing seems to really make sense. It was just a cut, a minor injury compared to what she had seen elsewhere. When she went to remove the jacket, his hands caught her wrists, and their eyes met.

"Can't you leave it on?"

She surveyed it, but ultimately decided he couldn't. "I've got to look at how deep it is, plus I've got to bandage it. Why are you bein' so difficult. It's not like you ain't seen me without clothes on," her voice sounds heavy in her ears, and she can hear her heartbeat in her chest. This really wasn't a big deal, but he was making it one. She had a point. Dignity was irrelevant nowadays, and he conceded, though he still looked very uneasy.

As soon as she walks around behind him and lifts the jacket off his body, she stops.

"_Oh_."

In the few seconds where the silence between them hung densely, she thought a millions different things. The first was sorrow. Complete and utter sorrow that anyone, any human being, would have to have gone through something like this. The second was anger. The third was pity. She knew he would never want her sympathy, but she had enough of it to give, regardless.

The scars ran deep. The tissue had long since turned pink and flesh-colored, but it still looked as if it had been incredibly painful and abusive. Daryl wasn't moving, as if gauging her reaction by what she did next. Beth didn't know whether to pretend that she didn't see them or to ask him if he was okay. She decided neither.

The tip of her index finger started on one of the top ones. She traces it lightly, touches it like a feather. He shivered. She could have lived a thousand lives and never live this moment again as intimately as it felt the first time. Daryl was completely still the entire time, and she was silent.

If she thought getting drunk with him and talking on the porch of the moonshine shack had been a mark of how close they had become, she was completely wrong. Right here, with her skin against his back, trying so hard to make him understand that whatever this was, it didn't have to define him, made her ache with something she didn't know she could feel.

Every touch seemed to be an attempt to communicate with him, in a way that he would know that this didn't make him broken or bad or whatever else he thought about himself.

Her lips just brushed the one by the base of his neck, and she heard his sharp intake of breath, the shift of his body as he adjusted to being underneath her lips. Her hands steadied herself on his shoulders, feeling his entire core temperature heat up at the touch of her mouth. She kept it chaste, because as much as she wanted to run her tongue along his skin (what, where did this desire even come from?), she knew this kind of intimacy was rung up on the innocence of the moment.

"You don't have to be embarrassed, you know," she whispers, her hand splayed along his back.

He made an indiscernible noise at the back of his throat that was half-way between a moan and a grunt, and there was something so human about it that she felt like she was going to cry.

"Can you just clean the cut?" he asks, looking over his shoulder. She noticed his neck and face were red.

Her nod is slow, but she decides not to talk about it. Instead, she focuses on their individual time out on runs today. It was the first day in a long time that they did not spend most of their time with each other, no matter how it was done.

"Ran into a swarm down at the store," he muttered. "Cut myself trying to get out of the back of the kitchen. They got a fuckin' can opener hanging from the ceiling and it went right through—well, can see."

"You saw a bunch?" she asked. He confirmed. "I didn't see one walker today. Saw bodies, but none of 'em moved."

They digested that information. "Weird."

"Don't think we should stick around. Tomorrow let's get the hell out and find somewhere more secluded."

She finishes cleaning the wound and starts to bandage it, looking at him before pressing her fingers back down on his bare skin. Their eyes met, but he looked away.

"Okay," she whispers. "That's fine."

* * *

"_Now you go."_

_"I don't know."_

_"Just say the first thing that pops into your head."_

_"I've never been out of Georgia."_

_"Really? Okay, good one."_

The SUV slows as it approaches the Georgia-Tennessee boarder. She looks at him nervously, biting her lip. He thinks she looks awfully fucking beautiful, but decides against acting on anything. A glance at her lips remind him of the way they had gently brushed his scars the night before by the fire. A familiar coil wound its way around his lower stomach and he let go of the thoughts, pushing himself to the present, staring at land he had never set foot on in his life.

"You said you ain't never left Georgia," she says.

"I wasn't lyin'."

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her nod, as if she understands. He thinks maybe she can begin to comprehend his disposition before, at least the non-abusive parts. Beth is a creature that fed on love and happiness and tried her best to transform it for others, to make them like her. He figured he was too broken to be affected by that bullshit.

But she had been trapped too.

In a way, the end of the world had freed both of them to fly their own path in life.

He had escaped his father and his asshole brother (it still hurts sometimes, but he ignores it). And Beth escaped her innocent boxed lifestyle that didn't suit her. The second unbidden memory surfaces to the front of his mind.

"_I wish I could just change."_

"_You did."_

"_Not enough. Not like you. It's like you were made for how things are now."_

"_I'm just used to it, things being ugly."_

Then her hand is on his arm, and it he can feel her burning, _burning_, through his skin. She's everywhere around him suffocating and alluring and everything that was entirely too good for him to ever feel like he deserves.

"Ready?"

He drives over the border and he doesn't even look back in the rearview mirror.

"It doesn't feel like stealin', when you need it," she whispers.

"Ain't no difference," he mutters.

She turns to face him, to look him right in the eye. Normally, he is unwavering in his stare, strong and steady as if he dares her to look away first. Now, he looks weak, and she can't figure it out. Daryl Dixon looked scared.

"But you wanted to leave food, back at the funeral home. You didn't want to rob them blind."

"Yeah, that was before."

_Before what?_ She thinks. Before things got worse? Before they completely deserted their chances of finding her family? Before things starting getting closer and stranger between them?

"It was less than a month ago," she crosses her arms, effectively trapping him.

The room they are in is small. It's a two-room apartment above a small main-street shop that had barely any supplies left that they could take. Upstairs, Beth had found a radio that worked with batteries (unfortunately there were no transmissions in the area), and a few more cans of vegetables.

But Daryl had backed himself into a corner by the desk where she was contemplating taking another textbook. This time it was a math book, looking more complicated than anything she would probably understand, but she had to try.

"Then don't take the damn book, is that what you want me to say?" he asks, something poisonous lacing his words.

"No," she says. Suddenly she's looking at him in a way that makes him want to shut his eyes and never open them again because he's scared he doesn't have the strength to ever look at anything else again. They were so beautiful, so achingly beautiful. God, he hated his head. "I want you to tell me why you think there's still good people. Or why you don't, if you changed your mind?"

He pauses his attempted movement, opens his eyes, and looks directly at her, still as stone. If his expression reflected fear before to her, any trace of it had disappeared. Daryl's eyes grew dark. Beth's reflected surprise. He seemed…she couldn't find the right word. Sexy? Mysterious? Upset?

While she was busy trying to decipher him, he was moving closer. She stilled. Their height difference, he noticed, was minimal in a moment like this. The only sound she was aware of was the steady _thump, thump, thump_ of her heart in her ears. Driven by this new feeling in her stomach, something she didn't know she could feel, she drifted her fingers upward, gently touching his chin. The unshaven skin felt pleasant under her fingers, and Daryl's eyes wanted to close under her touch.

He kept them wide open.

Beth watched him beneath lidded lashes, certain that he was feeling whatever this was too. Then he shoved the book hard into her gut, breaking the moment and moving her backwards a few feet. She looked like she was going to cry, but she didn't, and he was confident he had done the right thing, until she started yelling.

"YOU NEVER CHANGED AT ALL, DID YOU?" she screams. He hopes to God that there aren't any walkers around, because surely they will be trapped and he's sure there aren't any fireworks to get them out of this situation. "You were just hiding behind some stupid mask these last few weeks, pretending to care. I can't believe it. I was so stupid, thinking you had changed, that you cared…"

Then something explodes inside of him and he knows it's Beth Greene completely under his skin.

"I didn't change my mind," he says, loud enough for her to hear but soft enough that she had to shut up to hear him.

"You did."

The words sort of sink in, and she can feel how much of a bitch she was being. She takes the book, puts it in her pack, and he looks at her. "Ain't stealin' if you're gonna use it the way you do." There is a moment, where he thinks she might have kissed him if they weren't out on a run. In the middle of some god-forsaken town in Tennessee, trying to find shelter and food and safety. But he knows enough though he could probably stare at her for hours, that it is the most unsafe place—next to her.

Then she hugs him and he finds his hands covering her elbows.

He was getting really fucking sick of himself.

* * *

"_You're lucky you're a happy drunk." _

"_Yeah, I'm lucky."_

"_Some people can be real jerks when they drink." _

"_Yeah, I'm a dick when I'm drunk."_

* * *

They find an old house up in the mountains a few days later. It's nothing special, but it's within the reach of a small town, where Daryl had run for supplies earlier in the day while Beth had dressed the wild bird he had shot with the crossbow hours before. He came home, tossed a bag of shit on the table, and announced he had to relieve himself and went back outside.

For a few days, things had been slow between them. He didn't talk much (nothing new), but she didn't either. It was back to the days of comfortable silence. Something they could both enjoy.

She's reading her book when he comes back from taking a piss. The word "organic" keeps sounding like "orgasm" in her head and she's blushing, looking like a complete fool. She's reading about monomers and polymers and binding sites. It's fascinating, the way the chemistry sinks into her head. Often, she thinks she might've gone on to study it in college that life hadn't been cut so short.

Daryl locks up the house like normal, bringing another piece of wood to put on the fire. She thinks it is amazing that it is the middle of July and they have a lit fire, but this mountainous region just gets so cold at night. He sits on the recliner, just watching her as she reads. It feels uncomfortable, and she pretends to ignore it for a few minutes until she can't stand it anymore.

"What?" she asks innocently, bookmarking the text with her thumb between the pages.

"Mm-mmm," he hums, looking at her with this total and utter complacence.

"You seem weird."

"Just thinkin'," he pauses, gathering her attention, "that we might stay for a while, you know. Until we gotta leave again."

"This is some fucked-up déjà vu," she whispers. "I think you said that same thing back at the funeral home."

Heavy silence hangs between both of them for a few moments. She's recalling the conversation they had been having earlier about the unanswered question, and she's almost positive he is too. But they ignore each other's musings and get back to the topic at hand.

"Well, I'll check the door next time," he says flatly.

"Fine," she deadpans, going back to her book.

"You just gon' sit there and read, huh?"

Her blue eyes meet his and she stares. "What would you like me to do?" His shoulders shrug and she rolls her eyes. "Daryl, can you stop being so fucking apathetic? For a second?"

A weird sensation crawls into the room. He seemed to cringe at the second use of the word "fuck" for the night. "Better watch your mouth, girl."

"I'll talk however I damn please," she sasses.

"Think I'm rubbin' off on you."

"I can cuss as good as you now, I think," she mutters.

"Doubt that."

She tries to read again, but she keeps getting distracted when he says something sassy or smart. Finally, she gets so irritated that she puts it down for the night, going into her room to stash it away in her pack (because everything always had to be together, in one place, just in case). She's rummaging through it when she finds the fifth of whiskey that she's had since that day on the interstate.

His expression changes when she's standing in the doorway, a fifth of Fireball in her hand. Daryl looks like a man who has just been shot, and she feels bad for surprising him like that, then remembers that she doesn't give a shit. He hadn't known about it because she hadn't wanted him to. Probably couldn't believe that she would keep anything like that from him.

"Where'd you find that?"

She ignores his question, just starts pouring it into glasses from the cupboard. The smell is so overpowering as soon as she unscrews the lid. It's cinnamon and fire and something _hot_. Somewhere in her head, a warning light is going on that this is a really fucking bad idea.

"Last time we got lit, we burned down a shack," he reminds her.

"Ain't gonna do that this time," she smirks. "Unless you want to, of course."

He shakes his head, taking the glass from her. She thought he would have put up more of a fight than this to take the drink, but she's glad she doesn't have to convince him. This is what she needs. What they need. Just to relax.

She would never admit that she was using the whisky as a catalyst, because she didn't know what reaction she was speeding up.

"Do you wanna play a game?" she asks.

"Not that shit again," he groans. She smiles, and she sees him stand his ground, despite it. She signs, setting her glass down on the table. His expression changes quickly. "Almost forgot," he says, hand fishing into his pocket, "found this for you today."

He hands her a CD, one that she instantly recognizes.

"Remember you sayin' you liked them." He looks so ridiculous, handing her presents like it's not a disguise to make a peace offering for the silence, but she takes it and kisses him softly on the cheek. Maybe she lingers more than she should, because he shudders and there's a moment where they both stand very still.

"I still have that battery-operated radio," she whispers giddily, bringing it out into the room they currently occupied. Setting it down on the table, she popped a new set of batteries into them (they never seemed to run out of them, despite running out of food and other things much faster).

The Mountain Goats start playing, and it's the first time she's heard familiar music in almost two years. He looks pleased with himself, and she lays on the floor on her back, just staring at the ceiling, listening to words she'd never thought she'd hear again.

They end up drunk and laughing after an hour and a half. The only light they have is from the orange and yellow flames in the fireplace, all of the windows boarded up and locking out the light. The audio player is still going strong, and they are listening to the album for the second time when the conversation shifts.

"I miss running water more than I ever thought I could miss anythin'," she laughs, her voice soft in the drunken mood that settled between them.

"I don't miss much," he whispered, tracing the rim of his glass, his back against the wall of the house. "But I do miss toilet paper."

She let out this delirious drunk giggle, and she knows she should be embarrassed but she's not. He just looks at her, like he had never seen anything more beautiful in all his years on the planet.

"I miss fresh vegetables, and Sundays at church." He hums, low in his throat, and she feels herself growing hot, flushed. The sound reverberates through the room, but she continues on. "I miss bein' able to dip my toes down in the water, when the farm hands left and it was just me 'n' daddy down by the creek. We used to just take our shoes off and wade in the water, like nothin' bad could happen."

He takes a second to drink more before replying. "You have those memories, gotta hold on to 'em."

"I do," she smiles, turning her head onto her shoulder, staring into his eyes. She doesn't know when they got this close, but here they are, talking about his things used to be, drunk on whiskey, with some slow-moving music playing in the background. Her head rests on his shoulder. The scent of sweat and cinnamon—probably from the Fireball—invades her nose, but she leans into it, into him.

He wraps an arm around her awkwardly, trying to keep himself a safe distance from her, even when she is too close. She smells clean, which is more than he can say for himself. They sit still for a while, just trying to feel this uncharted territory out. And he's drunk and upset with himself for not pushing her away, but at some point he just admits that he couldn't anymore.

"Sometimes, I feel guilty, you know, for not thinkin' about them all the time."

"You can't do that to yourself," he says.

"I know. But I think it's just natural. Just somethin' you do when you lose people."

He hums, as if in agreement.

"Do you miss them?"

"Yeah," he admits. "Lil' Asskicker. Carol. Merle."

She crawls closer into him, like she's trying to fold herself into his side. Like she's trying to take his pain out of him, but it's no use because it's buried too deep.

"_I hope it stays dark forever  
I hope the worst isn't over  
And I hope you blink before I do  
And I hope I never get sober."_

She sings the words perfectly, no matter how inebriated she may be. Her lips breathe against his neck, and he feels alive and young and like suddenly everything matters again. She sings the whole song, and he thinks he should have shut it off just to listen to her, but the radio sounds so good with her. It's like it was meant for her.

"You have a nice voice," he tells her, looking at her hair as she turned to get up.

She flashes another smile at him, and she pulls him up. They stand there, the song still playing, her lips still moving to the words. She's about to kiss him when he has enough sense to push her away.

"Beth, I—" words fail him. He hurts. "We can't."

"Of course we can," she whispers, her lips touching the corner of his. God he wants to push her up against that wall, to just kiss her senseless and end this drought he suddenly feels in his heart.

"It's just…"

"Yes?" she breathes, her eyes bright and full of something, something he doesn't think he believes in anymore.

"You fuck me up."

He said it. And every word was true. For the last several days, he had tried and tried to push her from his mind, to fucking forget she was even a woman, to try and remember decency. Before all this happened, any interaction between them would have been unforgivable at best. Now, it didn't make any difference. She looked at him, her expression unreadable. Then words poured like fire out of her mouth.

"I. Don't. Care." He was looking down at her, their gazes uneven and her eyes shining in the darkness.

The quiet moment was suddenly broken by a loud gasp as he picked her up and sat her down on the table, their gazes now at even height. He leaned in to kiss her softly. Warm lips met with sweet, cinnamon flavor, and a small moan escaped her throat. He took advantage of her parted lips, darting his tongue to meet hers in a dance that had been withheld for too long.

Somewhere in the background, the music was still playing. His lips moved against hers in the rhythm of the song, softly and with purpose.

She twirled strands of his hair absent-mindedly, but when his fingers brought her lips towards his with bruising pressure, she had fistfuls in her palms, pulling gently and receiving a small nip from his teeth. She groaned when his lips left hers, but they returned to other places on her body: Her neck, her ear, her collarbone, her shoulder, her fingers, her chin, her nose.

Her back arched in midair, trying to get closer to him, and his hands caught her, masterfully steadying her trembling body and caressing her in a way that only made her want more. His mouth was travelling across the shell of her ear now, at an agonizingly slow rate, and her muscles twitched with anticipation, her mind clouded and exasperated. Her chest was heaving, and his fingers would idly stroke the underside of her breast through her shirt, making her shiver with pleasure. At one point, she was shaking so bad she thought she might pass out, but his steady hands were always there, preventing anything of the sort from happening.

Then he broke away.

She was just there, her world spinning and hazy and white hot heat racing through her veins when he pulled away. It was like she had been seconds away from burning, and her mind on the verge of something breathtaking and magnificent. He had taken that all away, leaving her breathless and tantalized.

She jumps down from the table, leading him onto the couch, where she straddles his lap as his hands find her bottom, pulling her closer. She grinds down and _oh Jesus_ he's harder than he's ever been for the cheap company he and Merle had been used to. Her small fingers are tracing patterns on his neck, and he's shivering and Beth is enjoying every minute of having him under her thumb.

When he makes a small noise at the back of his throat, she just stops and smiles against his skin, lightly kissing the side of his face. He just touches her back, raising goose bumps with the path his fingers take. They sit like that for a while, his vision going a little hazy from exhaustion and the alcohol. She starts to fall asleep against his neck, and he carries her to the bed and lays her down.

He's about to leave when her fingers grasp his wrist, bringing him closer. "Stay."

He does.

The room is spinning a little bit, so he lies away, watching her sleep. She's beautiful and he'll be damned if the last month or so hadn't been one of the best. It sucked ass, losing the prison. Losing everyone. Carol. Rick. All of them. But he had found a lot more here, with this one girl, than he could have found in years by himself. The music is soft and lulls him into a state of happiness so unlike anything he usually feels. He feels her stir beside him, and he makes to turn off the radio, pausing his hand to listen to the song, to feel her through it somehow.

_You and me lying on the tile floor, trying to keep cool, restless all night  
Sweating out the poison as the temperature climbs  
Staring up, up at the hundred-watt light that burns above  
Name one thing about us two anyone could love_

She kisses his hand, wrapping it around her waist. The batteries are dying in the radio, and he rolls over to shut it off, falling asleep next to her. The disc dies as it plays the last line:

_Five, four, three, two, one, watch for the flash.  
Something here will eventually have to explode  
Have to explode._


End file.
